“The facts are more than a wee bit different from the proclamations, computer models, dire predictions, and related assertions by much of the green-blinkered media.”

The city of Warsaw, Poland, recently hosted the 19th Conference of
the Parties (COP-19) to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC). Conference host countries normally “play game,”
but not in this case. Both the citizens of Poland and their government
revolted.

Essentially, Poland CALLED the global-warming agenda, AKA the climate-change BLUFF.

Poland’s government sacked its Minister of the Environment (and
host/chief of COP-19) half way through the conference and the people of
Poland decided to give NGO’s like Greenpeace, Sierra Club and 350.org a
clear “thumb down. ” Japan was equally clear and announced a change from
their previous Kyoto Protocol based commitment of a 25% reduction in
CO2 emissions by 2020 to a mere 3.8%.

Of course, the facts have been in favor of calling the climate bluff
for quite some time already. From the revelations of shady scientists
and shoddy science to nature’s failure to adhere to the fictitious
predictions made by every single climate model created over the last
decade, quite simply, the facts could no longer be hidden.

The Facts

The facts are more than a wee bit different from the proclamations,
computer models, dire predictions, and related assertions by much of the
green-blinkered media:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) could not possibly provide a warming “blanket”
to the earth’s atmosphere. The (relative low) frequency IR radiation
emitted by the earth’s surface is entirely taken up by the CO2 below an
elevation of 200 m (~500 foot). Therefore, any additional CO2 in the atmosphere above that level is of no consequence.

Most of the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from volcanic emissions. Prior to mankind’s large-scale use of fossil fuels, ALL the CO2 in the atmosphere came from volcanic emissions.

In the Arctic, contrary to common belief, the summer sea-ice extent
has been quite stable or growing in recent summers. The observed
“anomalies” (brief periods of faster decline or slower growth) were due
to ice-breakers plowing the area.

In the Arctic, polar bears are thriving. Today, their numbers are much higher than decades ago.

In the Antarctic, the ice mass has been strongly expanding in recent years.

Penguin colonies in the Antarctic are thriving. Previously unknown colonies have been discovered and others have increased in numbers.

Typhoons (in the Pacific) and hurricanes (in the Atlantic) have been
decreasing in recent years. The loss of life and property associated
with them is due to increased populations in flood-prone areas.

Typhoon Haiyan was one of many typhoons hitting the Philippines every year. While Haiyan was very strong, it was less of a calamity than predicted and not due to “climate change.”

Globally, temperatures have been declining over nearly two decades. Previous assertions to the contrary were largely based on thermometers influenced by man-made structures.

The earth’s climate is largely controlled by the sun’s radiation. The current and anticipated sun (-spot) activity, i.e. energy received by earth from the sun, will be below normal for the next decades.

In short, COP-19 was a phenomenal COP-OUT. Most unexpected was
Poland’s citizens’ and government’s decision to stand up and look at the
undeniable facts. They called COP-19’s bluff.

Northern Texas towns are experiencing an intense string of earthquakes –
the last of which was one of the most powerful in 5 years. As unusual
tremors have been going on for over 3 weeks now, many suspect fracking
might be to blame.

On Thursday, the region experienced two tremors, with one of them
registering 3.6 magnitude, 55 km west of the town of Azle at
07:58:36 GMT, as recorded by the US Geological Service, and the
other 2.8 at 08:41:07 GMT, with the epicenter not far from the
first one. USGS records show that the 3.6 tremor was one of the
strongest earthquakes to hit the region in 5 years.

“It sounded like a sonic boom, and then the house started
shaking,” Keith Krayer, a local resident who felt the effects
of the quake, told RT.

Krayer said he had no doubt the quake was sparked by
fracking. “When they frack,
they inject all that water and chemicals into the ground, then
they pump it back up and separate the gas from the water, then
they have to dispose of that water 13,000 feet down. It causes
the plates to slip, the lubrication from the water.”
Residents like Krayer are having their nerves put to the test as
the region chalked up its 16th this month. In the last four days, there
have been six recorded quakes.

Between 1970
and 2007, the area
around the Texas town of Azle (pop. 10,000) experienced just two
earthquakes. The peace and quiet began to change, however, at the
start of 2008, when 74 minor quakes were reported in the
region.

Now an increasing number of people, including scientists, are
speculating that natural gas production by fracking - a process
that forces high pressure water and chemicals into rock in order
to extract natural gas reserves - is the culprit. The problem,
however, is proving the claims.

Cliff Frolich, earthquake
researcher at the University of Texas, said waste water injection
wells from fracking could be responsible for the recent spate of
earthquake activity."I'd say it certainly looks very possible that the earthquakes
are related to injection wells," he said in an interview with
KHOU television.

Frolich left room for doubt when he said thousands of such wells
have operated in Texas for decades with no quakes anywhere near
them.

Frolich co-authored a 2009 study on earthquake activity near
Cleburne, just south of Azle, which concluded: "The possibility
exists that earthquakes may be related to fluid injection."

A recent government study lent credence to Frolich’s findings.

The use of underground storage wells to get rid of waste water
produced by fracking is “almost certainly” to blame for the jump
in earthquakes in Midwestern states in recent years, a recent
Geological Survey study has found.

The report said the number of magnitude-3 earthquakes or greater
occurring in the mid-region of North America surged from 29 in
2008 to 134 last year.

The USGS study pointed to an unusual surge in
tremors near wastewater wells in many US states, including
Arkansas, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio.

Earthquakes in Texas in last 3 weeks (image from http://earthquake.usgs.gov)

However, the USGS stopped
short of linking the process of fracking to earthquakes directly,
mostly blaming methods used to dispose of fracking
by-products.
In January 2012, following a rash of earthquakes, including a
4.0-magnitude tremor, Ohio legislators placed a temporary ban on
fracking after experts said the controversial process for storing
waste water in deep underground wells was to blame for the
outbreak of tremors.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Azle, Alan Brundrett, said it's crucial
to determine whether the latest series of quakes are man-made.

"What could it cause down the road?" he
asked. "What if a 5.0 happens and people's houses start
falling in on them?"
"Enough is enough!" Keith Krayer, a resident of Briar, just
north of Azle was quoted by the station as saying. "My
wife, she's having panic attacks because of it."
Thus far, the rattling has just produced a lot of anxiety. The
Parker County Sheriff's Office has no reports of damage or
injuries from any of Thursday’s earthquakes.

As of March 2012, Texas had listed nearly 6,000 oil and gas
fracking wells on FracFocus, an industry fracking disclosure
site, SourceWatch.org reports.

The first instance of hydraulic fracturing – creating fractures
from a wellbore drilled into reservoir rock formations – was
reportedly performed in 1947, the organization notes. Fracking on
a commercial scale, however, was first used in the Barnett Shale
– a geological formation which underlies the city of Fort Worth
and at least 17 counties.

The first Barnett Shale well was completed in 1981 in Wise
County, Texas. Subsequent drilling expanded greatly in the early
2000s due to a hike in natural gas prices and the use of
horizontal wells to increase production.

Fracking and horizontal drilling technology have been heralded as
an economic boon by the oil industry, though the techniques have
contributed to nationwide concern about air pollution,
groundwater contamination and broader environmental degradation.

Each year, the monarchs head south for the winter, some making an
epic journey as much as 3,000 miles long, with those in the eastern U.S.
and Canada heading to forests in Mexico.

Last year, monarch reseves in Mexico saw a plummet in the number of butterflies arriving—59 percent less than the year before, marking the lowest level in 20 years.

And exerts say 2013 is even worse. Gloria Tavera Alonso, director of a monarch reserve in the Mexican stae of Michoacán, told Spanish news agency EFE this week that she estimates there is a 50 percent reduction this year.

On the first of November, when Mexicans celebrate a holiday called
the Day of the Dead, some also celebrate the millions of monarch
butterflies that, without fail, fly to the mountainous fir forests of
central Mexico on that day. They are believed to be souls of the dead,
returned.

This year, for or the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies
didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle
in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of
60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million
that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the
spectacular migration could be near collapse.

“It does not look good,” said Lincoln P. Brower, a monarch expert at Sweet Briar College.

Each fall at about this time, I try to spend a weekend at the Black
Walnut Point Inn on Maryland’s Tilghman Island in the Chesapeake Bay.
Located on the southern tip of the island, the inn is a perfect place to
spot large numbers of monarch butterflies stopping to feed and rest
before heading across open water on their journey south to Mexico—some
traveling thousands of miles from the northern United States and Canada.
I time the trip according to a chart produced by Monarch Watch showing
the insects’ predicted arrival dates by latitude—and I’ve not been
disappointed.

Until this year, that is. Rather than the dozens of monarchs I
typically see feeding by day on the inn’s asters, goldenrods and other
fall-blooming plants—and the hundreds clustering for warmth on yew,
holly and hackberry branches once the sun starts to go down—I spotted
just a handful of monarchs in total and never more than one individual
at a time.

Like all migratory animals, monarchs, of course, are influenced by
weather, and one cannot draw conclusions from a two-day visit to a
single spot. Yet according to the citizen-science-fueled monitoring
organization Journey North, the number of overnight monarch roosts
recorded east of the Rockies this fall has been low, and roosts host
fewer butterflies than in previous years. “Overall the monarch numbers
in this migration are far below normal, and they are late,” says Monarch
Watch founder and director Chip Taylor. “The migration in the Midwest
this fall has been the lowest we have seen since the start of Monarch
Watch in 1992.”

Monarchs at a reserve in Michoacan. (Photo: Pablo Leautaud/cc/flickr)

Why the low numbers? Robbins points to loss of the monarch's habitat
in the U.S., fueled in part by expanding acreage for biofuels, which has
included "plowing every scrap of earth that can grow a corn plant,
including millions of acres of land once reserved in a federal program
for conservation purposes." And increasing crop land means milkweed, the
host plant for the monarch catterpillar, is wiped out, explains Laura Chisholm of the Butterfly House at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The loss of milkweed, Tangley writes, "is particularly acute in the
U.S. Midwest, where genetically engineered, herbicide-tolerant corn and
soybeans now allow farmers to apply the chemicals broadly, wiping out
milkweed that once thrived between crop rows and in fallow fields on
millions of acres of agricultural land."

Robbins also points to the notorious but widely used herbicice
Roundup, "a herbicide that kills virtually all plants except crops that
are genetically modified to survive it."

Climate change is also a contributing factor. ThinkProgressreported that a

study found
climate change could affect the migration of monarch butterflies, which
migrate from Mexico to the southern U.S. when weather gets warm, where
they lay their eggs. The study found that monarchs needed a cold trigger
in order to continue migrating south to Mexico in the fall — without
those cold conditions, monarchs in the midst of migrating south can
actually reorient themselves and fly north.

“How many days of the low temperature are needed or the actual
temperatures themselves are just not known. All we know is that for 24
days, day and night, if we mimic temperatures in Mexico, on top of the
mountains there, the butterflies then start traveling north,” author
Steven Reppert said.

Extreme weather could also pose a major threat to monarchs. in 2002, a
severe storm in Mexico killed nearly 80 percent of the monarch
butterfly population there.

“That was a very extreme and unusual weather event. It’s usually the
dry season; there aren’t big storms there, but they just had a lot of
precipitation. That was followed by cold temperatures, so that
juxtaposition of precipitation and cold just killed all the
butterflies,” Karen Oberhauser, a professor in the Department of
Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at the University of
Minnesota told ClimateWire. “Clearly, that kind of storm is predicted to be more common under climate change scenarios.”

For Taylor, the outlook for the iconic monarch isn't good.

“We had some really robust Monarch butterfly populations in the 90s,” he said. “But we’re never going to see those again.”

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

After a talk on the collapse of complex societies, Truthdig columnist
Chris Hedges answers an audience question: "Will it take [literature,
music and art] to waken us to the empathy of other suffering or
hardship?"

A black-hole system in a neighboring galaxy is twice as bright as astronomers had thought possible, a new study reports.

The incredible luminosity of the system in question, which resides
about 22 million light-years from Earth in the Pinwheel Galaxy, may
force a rethink of the theories that explain how some black holes radiate energy, researchers said.

"As if black holes weren’t extreme enough, this is a really extreme one
that is shining as brightly as it possibly can," study co-author Joel
Bregman of the University of Michigan said in a statement. "It’s figured
out a way to be more luminous than we thought possible." [Images: Black Holes of the Universe]

The astronomers studied a system called ULX-1, which consists of a
black hole and a companion star that orbit each other. As its name
suggests — ULX is short for "ultraluminous X-ray source" — ULX-1
generates prodigious amounts of high-energy X-ray light, which is
emitted by material spiraling down into the black hole's maw.

This light is so intense, in fact, that astronomers had suspected that
ULX-1 contains an intermediate-mass black hole — one that harbors
between 100 and 1,000 times the mass of the sun. But the new study suggests that the black hole is actually on the small side.

The research team, led by Jifeng Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
in Beijing, studied ULX-1 using the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and
two NASA spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Spectroscopic analysis revealed that the companion star in ULX-1 is a
big, hot type known as a Wolf-Rayet star. With this information in hand,
the team could then infer the star's mass from its brightness, pegging
it at 19 times the mass of the sun.

The researchers also found that the star and the black hole orbit each
other once every 8.2 days. This allowed them to estimate the black
hole's mass at between 20 to 30 times the mass of the sun.

ULX-1 thus apparently contains not an intermediate-mass black hole, but
a stellar one — an object that forms after a star dies and collapses on
itself. So astronomers have still not definitively found a middleweight
black hole, which some researchers think may be the seeds of the supermassive monsters that lurk at the heart of most, if not all, galaxies.

"Our findings may turn the trend of taking ultraluminous X-ray sources
as promising intermediate black hole candidates," Liu said in a
statement.

The study team isn't sure how the ULX-1 system manages to emit so much
light. It's possible, researchers said, that the black hole may be
feeding off the companion's stellar wind — the stream of charged
particles flowing from its atmosphere.

This mechanism had previously been regarded as too inefficient to power
an ultraluminous X-ray source, but ULX-1 may send theorists back to the
drawing board.

"Our work shows, based on our conclusion of a stellar mass black hole,
that our understanding of the black hole radiation mechanism is
incomplete and needs revision," Liu told SPACE.com via email.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The
experimental lab-created Atlantic salmon eggs have been produced by
AquaBounty, an American company, at a remote facility in Bay Fortune,
PEI for more than a decade while it tries to convince the U.S.
government to allow the mutant fish into grocery stores, says the local
PEI group, the Islanders Say No to Frankenfish. (From their Facebook
page)

Facility on Prince Edward Island can now begin commercial production of genetically-modified salmon eggs

The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has moved 'Frankenfish'
one step closer to the plates of consumers by approving the commercial
production of genetically-engineered (or -modified GE/GM) salmon eggs in
Canada.

AquaBounty, the U.S.-based company behind the drive to commercialize
the freakishly fast-growing salmon, now has permission to transform its
research facility on Prince Edward Island, well-known as a seafood mecca
on the north Atlantic coast, into a production facility where salmon
eggs spliced with genes from a seal eel can be produced on a mass scale.

Food safety were quick to criticize the move.

“We are alarmed and disappointed by the short-sightedness of this decision," said
Andrew Kimbrell, executive director for the Center for Food Safety, in a
statement. "GE salmon production, in Canada or anywhere else, threatens
native salmon survival around the world."

The decision marked the first time any government had given the
go-ahead to commercial scale production involving a GM food animal.

The move clears the way for AquaBounty to scale up production of the salmon at its sites in PEI and Panama in anticipation of eventual approval by American authorities.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to render a decision in
the near future on the sale of GM salmon, and in due course some 30
other species of GM fish currently under development, campaigners and
industry figures said.

Kimbrell was adamant that FDA approval would be mistake, saying his
group "has spearheaded U.S. opposition to approval of this experimental
GE fish for over a decade because of its inherent irreversible harms.
Yet FDA has thus far refused to rigorously analyze the impacts of GE
salmon. It must do so before even considering any approval.”

Though the eggs in Canada would not yet be allowed to grow into fish,
the decision by country's regulatory body, Environment Canada, was
startling to those concerned about the safety of the "AquAdvantage
Salmon™" (yes, its trademarked) who cite concerns about what would
happen if these fish escape their hatcheries or commingle with native
Atlantic salmon.

“This is one concrete step closer to the reality of GM fish on our plates, and unfortunately it is a really dramatic step,” said Lucy Sharratt of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network to the Guardian.
“It's a global first, and it has a significant global potential impact
for our environment. It starts a chain of decisions that could be just
disastrous for our aquatic ecosystems.”

And Sharon Labchuk, of the P.E.I. group “Islanders Say No to Frankenfish,” told the local Prince Edward Island Guardian
that the idea of genetically altering fish is "very experimental and
the risks of anything going wrong are disastrous. They can wipe out the
wild salmon population if these fish ever escape and their eggs end up
in the wild rivers.”

Environment Canada’s decision is a little unusual given that
AquaBounty has come under fire for failing to meet Panamanian
environmental regulations. Last week AquaBounty was the subject of a
complaint from the Environmental Advocacy Center of Panama to Panama’s
National Environmental Authority after a 2012 investigation showed that
the company had failed to submit regular monitoring or obtain permits
for wastewater discharge.

“These allegations suggest a dangerous pattern of non-compliance and mismanagement by AquaBounty,
raising the likelihood of an environmentally damaging escape of these
fish,” George Kimbrell, senior attorney for Center for Food Safety,
wrote in a press release last week. “This news further undermines the
empty assurances that AquaBounty and the Food and Drug Administration
have given the public and suggests that Panama’s environmental laws may
have also been broken.”

AquaBounty has been conducting research and running tests on genetically
modified fish for some 20 years in the hope that it will eventually win
approval to market its products in the estimated $100 billion global
fish market. The company is also testing modifications of other fish
like tilapia and trout.

“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. ”Control food and you control the people.”

Global food control has nearly been
achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified)
seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But
this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our
food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in
the hands of transnational corporations.

Profits Before Populations

According to an Acres USA interview
of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue
University, two modified traits account for practically all of the
genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect
resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves
insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals).
Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that
name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants
genetically modified to resist it.
Glyphosate-based herbicides are now the most commonly used herbicides
in the world. Glyphosate is an essential partner to the GMOs that are
the principal business of the burgeoning biotech industry. Glyphosate is
a “broad-spectrum” herbicide that destroys indiscriminately, not by
killing unwanted plants directly but by tying up access to critical
nutrients.

Because of the insidious way in which it works, it has been sold as a
relatively benign replacement for the devastating earlier dioxin-based
herbicides. But a barrage of experimental data has now shown glyphosate
and the GMO foods incorporating it to pose serious dangers to health.
Compounding the risk is the toxicity of “inert” ingredients used to make
glyphosate more potent. Researchers have found, for example, that the surfactant POEA can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. But these risks have been conveniently ignored.

A ban on GMO and glyphosate use might go far toward improving the
health of Americans. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade
agreement for which the Obama Administration has sought Fast Track
status, would block that sort of cause-focused approach to the
healthcare crisis.

Roundup’s Insidious Effects

Roundup-resistant crops escape being killed by glyphosate, but they
do not avoid absorbing it into their tissues. Herbicide-tolerant crops
have substantially higher levels of herbicide residues than other crops.
In fact, many countries have had to increase their legally allowable
levels—by up to 50 times—in order to accommodate the introduction of GM
crops. In the European Union, residues in foods are set to rise 100-150 times if a new proposal by Monsanto is approved. Meanwhile, herbicide-tolerant “super-weeds” have adapted to the chemical, requiring even more toxic doses and new toxic chemicals to kill the plant.

Human enzymes are affected by glyphosate just as plant enzymes are:
the chemical blocks the uptake of manganese and other essential
minerals. Without those minerals, we cannot properly metabolize our
food. That helps explain the rampant epidemic of obesity in the United
States. People eat and eat in an attempt to acquire the nutrients that
are simply not available in their food.

Glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an
overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play
crucial roles in biology . . . . Negative impact on the body is
insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages
cellular systems throughout the body. Consequences are most of the
diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include
gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease,
depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

More than 40 diseases have been linked to glyphosate use, and more keep appearing. In September 2013, the National University of Rio Cuarto, Argentina, published research
finding that glyphosate enhances the growth of fungi that produce
aflatoxin B1, one of the most carcinogenic of substances. A doctor from
Chaco, Argentina, told Associated Press, “We’ve gone from a pretty
healthy population to one with a high rate of cancer, birth defects and
illnesses seldom seen before.” Fungi growths have increased
significantly in US corn crops.

Agribusiness claims that glyphosate and
glyphosate-tolerant crops will improve crop yields, increase farmers’
profits and benefit the environment by reducing pesticide use. Exactly
the opposite is the case. . . . [T]he evidence indicates that glyphosate
herbicides and glyphosate-tolerant crops have had wide-ranging
detrimental effects, including glyphosate resistant super weeds,
virulent plant (and new livestock) pathogens, reduced crop health and
yield, harm to off-target species from insects to amphibians and
livestock, as well as reduced soil fertility.

Politics Trumps Science

In light of these adverse findings, why have Washington and the
European Commission continued to endorse glyphosate as safe? Critics
point to lax regulations, heavy influence from corporate lobbyists, and a
political agenda that has more to do with power and control than
protecting the health of the people.

In the ground-breaking 2007 book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation,
William Engdahl states that global food control and depopulation became
US strategic policy under Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger. Along
with oil geopolitics, they were to be the new “solution” to the threats
to US global power and continued US access to cheap raw materials from
the developing world. In line with that agenda, the government has shown
extreme partisanship in favor of the biotech agribusiness industry,
opting for a system in which the industry “voluntarily” polices itself.
Bio-engineered foods are treated as “natural food additives,” not
needing any special testing.

In the critical arena of food safety research, the
biotech industry is without accountability, standards, or peer-review.
They’ve got bad science down to a science.

Whether or not depopulation is an intentional part of the agenda, widespread use of GMO and glyphosate is having that result.
The endocrine-disrupting properties of glyphosate have been linked to
infertility, miscarriage, birth defects and arrested sexual development.
In Russian experiments, animals fed GM soy were sterile by the third
generation. Vast amounts of farmland soil are also being systematically
ruined by the killing of beneficial microorganisms that allow plant
roots to uptake soil nutrients.

In Gary Null’s eye-opening documentary Seeds of Death: Unveiling the Lies of GMOs, Dr.
Bruce Lipton warns, “We are leading the world into the sixth mass
extinction of life on this planet. . . . Human behavior is undermining
the web of life.”

The TPP and International Corporate Control

As the devastating conclusions of these and other researchers awaken
people globally to the dangers of Roundup and GMO foods, transnational
corporations are working feverishly with the Obama administration to
fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that would
strip governments of the power to regulate transnational corporate
activities. Negotiations have been kept secret from Congress but not
from corporate advisors, 600 of whom have been consulted and know the
details. According to Barbara Chicherio in Nation of Change:

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has the potential to become the biggest regional Free Trade Agreement in history. . . .

The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto
lobbyist, Islam Siddique. If ratified the TPP would impose punishing
regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented right to
demand taxpayer compensation for policies that corporations deem a
barrier to their profits.

. . . They are carefully crafting the TPP to insure that citizens of
the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will
be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown
and the use of herbicides and pesticides.

Food safety is only one of many rights and protections liable to fall to this super-weapon of international corporate control. In an April 2013 interview on The Real News Network, Kevin Zeese called the TPP “NAFTA on steroids” and “a global corporate coup.” He warned:

No matter what issue you care about—whether its wages,
jobs, protecting the environment . . . this issue is going to adversely
affect it . . . .

If a country takes a step to try to regulate the financial industry
or set up a public bank to represent the public interest, it can be sued
. . . .

Return to Nature: Not Too Late

There is a safer, saner, more earth-friendly way to feed nations.
While Monsanto and US regulators are forcing GM crops on American
families, Russian families are showing what can be done with
permaculture methods on simple garden plots. In 2011, 40% of Russia’s food was grown on dachas
(cottage gardens or allotments). Dacha gardens produced over 80% of the
country’s fruit and berries, over 66% of the vegetables, almost 80% of
the potatoes and nearly 50% of the nation’s milk, much of it consumed
raw. According to Vladimir Megre, author of the best-selling Ringing Cedars Series:

Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners
can feed the world – and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or
any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody’s got enough
food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing
season per year – so in the US, for example, gardeners’ output could be
substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the
US is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens – and it produces
nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.

In the US, only about 0.6 percent
of the total agricultural area is devoted to organic farming. This area
needs to be vastly expanded if we are to avoid “the sixth mass
extinction.” But first, we need to urge our representatives to stop Fast
Track, vote no on the TPP, and pursue a global phase-out of
glyphosate-based herbicides and GMO foods. Our health, our finances and
our environment are at stake.
____________________________

Monday, November 25, 2013

Ten major volcanoes have erupted along the Ring of Fire during the
past few months, and the mainstream media in the United States has been
strangely silent about this. But this is a very big deal. We are
seeing eruptions at some volcanoes that have been dormant for decades.
Yes, it is certainly not unusual for two or three major volcanoes along
the Ring of Fire to be active at the same time, but what we are
witnessing right now is highly unusual. And if the U.S. media is not
concerned about this yet, the truth is that they should be.
Approximately 90 percent of all earthquakes and approximately 80 percent
of all volcanic eruptions occur along the Ring of Fire, and it runs
directly up the west coast of the United States. Perhaps if Mt. Rainier
in Washington state suddenly exploded or a massive earthquake flattened
Los Angeles the mainstream media would wake up. Most Americans have
grown very complacent about these things, but right now we are
witnessing volcanic activity almost everywhere else along the Ring of
Fire. It is only a matter of time before it happens here too.

Sadly, most Americans cannot even tell you what the Ring of Fire is. The following is how Wikipedia defines the “Ring of Fire”…

The Ring of Fire is an area where a large number of
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific
Ocean. In a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) horseshoe shape, it is associated with
a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and
volcanic belts and/or plate movements. It has 452 volcanoes and is home
to over 75% of the world’s active and dormant volcanoes.

An easy way to think about the Ring of Fire is to imagine a giant red band stretching along the perimeter of the Pacific Ocean.

And yes, that includes the entire west coast of the United States and the entire southern coast of Alaska.

10 major volcanoes along the Ring of Fire have suddenly roared to
life in recent months. The following are short excerpts from news
reports about those eruptions…

Volcano creates new island off the coast of Japan:
A dramatic volcanic eruption in the Pacific Ocean has created a tiny
new islet in Japan’s territorial waters, officials said Thursday, the
first time in decades the nation has seen the phenomenon.

The navy spotted smoke about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of
Tokyo on Wednesday and Japan’s coastguard later verified the birth of
the islet around the Ogasawara island chain.

Video footage showed plumes of smoke and ash billowing from the
200-metre island, and Japan’s coastguard said it was warning vessels to
use caution in the area until the eruption cools off.

Mount Sinabung in Indonesia:
A volcano in western Indonesia has erupted eight times in just a few
hours, “raining down rocks” over a large area and forcing thousands to
flee their homes, officials said Sunday.

Mount Sinabung has been erupting on and off since September, but went
into overdrive late Saturday and early Sunday, repeatedly spewing out
red-hot ash and rocks up to eight kilometres (five miles) into the air.

Colima in Mexico:
On Monday night and Tuesday morning, the Colima volcano showed two
strong exhalations; ejecting lava down its slopes and ash skyward, that
has reached several villages. Since last Sunday, the Volcan de Fuego de
Colima was reactivated after several weeks of apparent calm and until
Tuesday registered between 30 and 35 puffs per day, spewing lava down
its slopes and ash that reached the people of Cheese, municipality of
Cuauhtémoc, Colima, and some towns in the state of Jalisco.

Sakurajima in Japan:
After a short phase of weaker activity, the volcano began to erupt more
violently yesterday with a series of powerful explosions that sent ash
plumes up to 15,000 ft (4,5 km). Near-constant ash emissions have been
taking place from the Showa crater.

Fuego in Guatemala:
Two lava flows are active on the upper slopes of the volcano at the
moment, to the Taniluya (south) and Ceniza canyon (SE). The effusive
activity started on 11 Nov and increased on 18 November, reaching a
length of 600 m. Constant avalanches detach from the flow fronts. At
the same time, explosive activity at the summit crater remained at low
to moderate levels, with strombolian explosions that produce ash plumes
of up to 800 m height and incandescent jets visible from distance.

Yaser in Vanuatu:
Geohazards reports that the volcano continues to produce
near-continuous ash emissions while explosions are relatively weak. This
phase of ash emissions began on 3 November and are likely to continue
into the coming days and weeks.

Popocatepetl in Mexico:
The Popocatepetl volcano showcased with a layer of snow was observed
throughout the morning and mid-day from the city of Puebla and columns
generated by medium-intensity exhalations. According to the monitoring
system of the National Center for Disaster Prevention (Cenapred) in the
last 24 hours, the colossus presented 57 exhalations of low intensity,
probably accompanied by emissions of steam and gas.

Art is dangerous. It makes people move out of standard-response channels.

They don’t see what they’re supposed to see anymore. They see what they’re not supposed to see.

That’s why colleges teach brain-deadening courses in art history. Every attempt is made to codify the students’ reactions.

I’m not just talking about political art. I mean anything that truly comes out of reliance on imagination.

Those who run things—and their willing dupes—want reality to look a certain way and be experienced and felt in certain ways. These limited spectra form a shared lowest common denominator.

Even so-called spiritual experience is codified. It’s called organized religion. I call it “give money to the ceiling.” You give your money and they tell you high how the ceiling of your experience is and what you’ll find when you get there.

Art has none of these limitations. It’s created by people who’ve gone beyond the shrunken catalog of emotions, thoughts, and perceptions listed by authorities.

Art, by which I mean imagination, throws caution to the winds. It invents realities that engender new reactions, never before experienced. It blows apart old rigid perception.

The hammer blows and the soft propaganda of the common culture install layers of mind control: “See things, experience things in these prescribed ways.”

Over the years, I’ve encouraged a number of people to become artists. Aside from the work they then invented, I noticed their whole approach to, and perception of, life altered radically.

Their sense of vitality, their courage, their adventurous spirit came to the foreground.

Mind control, externally applied and self-induced, is all about putting a lid on creative power. That is its real target.

The one trap an artist—which is to say anyone who lives through and by imagination—has to avoid is thinking of himself as a victim because he is “an outsider.”

Outside is good. Outside has great strength.

When an artist invents himself as a victim, he then goes on to lash out at people who have nothing to do with the fate to which he’s consigned himself.

Authorities in any society, no matter what they call themselves, are invested in systems that will maintain a status quo of perception. They are constantly producing new systems for that purpose.

Technocrats would like you to believe that hooking your brain up to some super-brain computer will fulfill your needs and desires. They seek to prove that all invention, all creation, all art, all imagination is merely a set of calculations within a closed system.

This effort betrays their own despair. They see no way they can truly create.

It is the vacuum in which all elites live. They build up a frozen dead consciousness of models and algorithms and “solutions,” and they seek to impose it, as reality, on the minds of populations.

Essentially, they’re saying, “If we have a soul-sickness, you have to have it, too.”

It’s called hatred of life.

On the other hand, individual creative power launches from a platform of freedom and rises through layer after layer of greater freedom.

From that perspective, authoritarian power looks like a sick-unto-dying charade.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

"Barely two months after publication, Grain Brain is already a bestseller, and many people are wondering if they should take drastic dietary action in order to save their brains."

Celiac disease is widely known to cause digestive problems. That's just the tip of the iceberg, according to the book Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers,
by David Perlmutter. The intestinal difficulties associated with celiac
disease are caused by an immunological response triggered by gluten,
similar to an allergic reaction but less violent. This response, which
leads to inflammation in the gut, can happen elsewhere in the body, too.
Inflammation is at the root of many diseases and complications,
including, Perlmutter argues, brain decay. Gluten can lead to
inflammation in the brain, which Perlmutter believes leads to conditions
like dementia and Alzheimer's.

A practicing neurologist, Dr. Perlmutter's experiences with patients,
along with medical research he's studied, have led him to piece together
a theory behind brain degeneration that's based on a foundation of
gluten and high blood sugar. He also argues for the importance of
cholesterol to maintaining brain health, and makes a compelling case
that cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are bad for the brain.

Grain Brain frequently veers from the brain to other parts of
the body that Perlmutter says are damaged by gluten and carbohydrates
and of the general dangers of fat avoidance. You may have heard some of
these ideas elsewhere; Perlmutter is clearly aligned with the likes of
Robert Lustig, a pediatrician who writes of the ills of sugar, and Gary
Taubes, one of the first to demolish the idea that dietary fat and
cholesterol are responsible for heart disease.

Protesting could soon become a thing of luxury at any drill site in the
United States - courtesy of new laws co-crafted by the oil lobby.

Aside
from forcing demonstrators to shell out 5 thousand dollars for a rally
permit... the bill would also excuse the federal government from
regulating the fracking industry. Gayane Chichakyan reports.

Editor's note: Heather Gass outlines how our UN and aristocracy have taken words such as "sustainability," and are using this deceptive language to hide both austerity and the manner of bailouts that are actually in process. This attributes the movement of wealth from that of the people, into the hands of those who have no conscience or humanitarian values. This is a form of psychological warfare and awareness is beyond critical, as partnerships are already being employed world wide with the monolithic powerful.

A carving tool designed
by MIT Media Lab postdoc Amit Zoran, called FreeD, allows the user to
control the carving process while aided by a computer guidance system
that is preprogrammed with the desired three-dimensional shape. Credit:
MIT

It's often easy to tell
at a glance the difference between a mass-produced object and one that
has been handcrafted: The handmade item is likely to have distinctive
imperfections and clear signs of an individual's technique and style.

Now, some
researchers at MIT are finding ways to blur those distinctions, making
it possible, for example, to sculpt items with those distinctive signs
of handicraft, while controlling the outcome so that the object doesn't
stray too far from the desired form. They described their work at the
recent Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on User Interface
Software and Technology.

Amit Zoran, a postdoc at the MIT Media Lab who did much of this work
as part of his doctoral thesis research, is the lead author of the
reports. He says that, in an age of increasing standardization and
mass-production, he has been "searching for this human quality, for ways
to translate the long heritage of craft and creativity" into the
digital age.

For example, in work with graduate student Roy Shilkrot, Zoran has
designed a handheld carving tool that can be programmed with a desired
three-dimensional shape. When the user begins to carve a block of
material, anytime his motions would extend into the region of the
desired final form, the device provides physical feedback that slows the
motion.

If the carving alters the shape so much that it would compromise the
structural integrity of the object, the computerized system can adjust
the shape accordingly, in real time. For example, if in sculpting a
giraffe the user carved too far into the neck, the computer can adjust
the shape, introducing a bend in the neck that maintains its strength.

The basic principles
Zoran and his colleagues are pursuing could also extend into physical
safety. For example, by recognizing when they might be about to inflict
damage, these "smart tools" could sense that a sharp blade is getting
too close to a user's fingers, for example, and automatically deflect
its path to avoid injury.

"We're developing tools that don't have a direct physical, craft
heritage, but are entirely new," Zoran says of a project conducted with
graduate student Pragun Goyal. "Creativity is all about error. … We're
looking for creativity, for something that surprises us."

To demonstrate the inherent flexibility and creativity of these
computer-assisted tools, Zoran had several different people make
carvings based on the same programmed shape—in this case, a cat. As
expected, each piece had a unique appearance, with distinctive textures,
forms, and styles.

Goyal and his
advisor, Joseph Paradiso, an associate professor of media arts and
sciences, have also developed a handheld inkjet printer head. The device
can be programmed to print a specific image, but instead of moving
across a fixed track as in a conventional printer, it can be guided by
hand across any surface. This would allow, for example, a highly
detailed image to be printed onto a complex 3-D shape—something no
conventional printer can do.

This combination of digital capabilities and human control could
permit a new kind of tool for measurement or testing, explains Goyal.
For example, a handheld probe could be used to test an electronic
circuit board—but unlike ordinary probes, it could be preprogrammed with
details of the circuit. So instead of having to manually set
parameters, such as the expected voltage range at a given point, the
device would know what range to set, and do so instantly. It would also
record the reading and automatically associate each result with the
exact location where it was taken.

Zoran, Goyal, and Shilkrot carried out this research with Paradiso
and Pattie Maes as part of the Media Lab's groups on Responsive
Environment and Fluid Interfaces.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

WAL-MART: THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE is a feature length documentary
that uncovers a retail giant's assault on families and American values.

The
film dives into the deeply personal stories and everyday lives of
families and communities struggling to fight a goliath. A working mother
is forced to turn to public assistance to provide healthcare for her
two small children. A Missouri family loses its business after Wal-Mart
is given over $2 million to open its doors down the road. A mayor
struggles to equip his first responders after Wal-Mart pulls out and
relocates just outside the city limits. A community in California
unites, takes on the giant, and wins!

Producer/Director Robert
Greenwald and Brave New Films take you on an extraordinary journey that
will change the way you think, feel -- and shop.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

On top of all the other troubling ingredients, chemicals and known
toxins found in foods and/or used in its production and cultivation,
there is apparently also carbon monoxide to be concerned about.

Yes, the silent but deadly gas carbon monoxide.

Apparently the FDA – our loving watchdogs – have ok’d its use as a color preservative
in meats, as it evidently helps keep us appearances for as much as 20
days. The carbon monoxide (known for its deadly tail pipe exhaust and as
a carcinogen in cigarette smoke) is used to give fish and meat a fresh
“red” look to appeal to buyers. However, some have warned this can also
give spoiled or less-than-fresh foods the same glossy red-appearance –
that is, until consumers come home to a rotten surprise.

Consumer groups and a natural flavor, color and extract company named Kalsec (are there competing interests here?) have challenged the use of carbon monoxide as a food preservative,
arguing that while it can keep meat appealing for nearly three weeks
while unwrapped meat is remains attractive for only a few, it poses a
problem, claiming that consumers might be ‘fooled into buying spoiled or
old meat.’

“The gas not only keeps meat red while on the shelf but after it’s spoiled.”

Carbon Monoxide… Yummy!

When breathed in, carbon monoxide can – infamously – cause acute and immediate death. However, breathing less than deadly levels can also cause or are associated with many severe chronic health affects, particularly on the brain and neurological system.

“Up to forty percent of those poisoned can suffer
problems that range from amnesia, headaches and memory loss to
personality and behavioural changes, loss of muscle and bladder control
and impairment of co-ordination and vision.”

So are there any ill effects from ingesting carbon monoxide in small quantities over long periods of time?

At least one scientific study claimed it was highly unlikely to cause toxic effects in human health, instead praising the “cherry red color” it gave to meat:

ABSTRACT: Retail meat can be packaged in gas mixtures
containing 60–70% carbon dioxide (CO2), 30–40% nitrogen (N2) and
<0.5% carbon monoxide (CO). This gas mixture with CO provides a
unique combination of a long microbiological shelf life and a stable, cherry red colour of the meat.
The shelf life of meat packaged in the CO mixture is longer than that
of meat packaged in the commonly used atmospheres with high oxygen (O2),
that is, approximately 70% O2 and 30% CO2. The consumption of meat that
has been packaged in a CO mixture will result in only negligible levels
of carboxyhaemoglobin in the blood. It is highly improbable that the use of CO in the packaging of meat will present a toxic threat to consumers.

Not completely sure over here what the long-term effects might be,
but one claim that any harm is “highly improbable” is hardly enough to
keep people from being just a little freaked out that this is one known
toxin being added to the food supply.

Have there been any long term studies, or was just this another gross G.R.A.S. assumption (Yes, there is one for carbon monoxide in food) that the public is fine with being treated as a waste disposal bin?

The former Secretary of Defense acknowledged
in May 2012 that the DOD “is the only major federal agency that cannot
pass an audit today.” The Pentagon will not be ready for an audit for
another five years, according to Panetta.

The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not
complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government
departments. That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled
out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was
supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for. That sum exceeds
the value of China’s economic output last year.

Healthesound.info

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